Hollywood and the Homefront
by David Krell
david@davidkrell.com
From 1991-1993, ABC aired the show Homefront about the fictional town of River Run, Ohio in post-World War II. During World War II, films provided the main entertainment on the real-life home front with television being about a decade away from reaching the tipping point.
During a war, several operations take place to ensure the military objectives of defeating the enemy, capturing its territory, and provoking its surrender. Reconnaissance informs the assessment of obstacles, surprises, and solutions in realizing a mission. Strategy lays out the ‘big picture’ or ‘game plan’ in basic terms. Tactics specify how the strategy will be achieved.
On the homefront, similar processes occur in the battle for the public’s hearts and minds. At no time in military history was this more evident than World War II.
Heeding the country’s call, entertainment’s power brokers, decision makers, and creative geniuses tapped their tremendous resources to participate in the ‘war effort.’
In its infinite wisdom, the Army chose Frank Capra to oversee a series of training films for soldiers. These films did not show the soldiers how to combat, rather, they gave the reasons behind war. Appropriately, the series is titled Why We Fight. Capra had the requisite combination of filmmaking knowledge, storytelling ability, and patriotism necessary to produce the films.
An immigrant, Capra capitalized on All-American, brow-beating, chest-puffing, flag-waving themes in his mainstream films. In the 1939 classic film Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Capra’s film actor alter ego Jimmy Stewart plays the title role of a junior United States senator who sees America through a prism of hope, optimism, and promise rather than one of cynicism, pessimism, and greed. An early scene with Jean Arthur shows Stewart pointing at the Capitol Building full of wonder, excitement, and ambition at the possibilities of democracy.
Naturally, Capra fit the bill for a series depicting, explaining, and reinforcing the reasons to fight for democracy, freedom, and the American way of life. But Capra took no chances with the Why We Fight films. He believed that less is more and adhered to the KISS theory -- Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Joseph McBride explains the legendary director’s approach, reason, and strength in That Fellow Capra, Chapter 16 of his biography of the director, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success.
Although a few of the films made by Capra’s unit were shown in American commercial theaters and all seven of the Why We Fight films were widely seen abroad both by military and civilian audiences (versions were produced in several foreign languages), they were made principally to indoctrinate the American GI. [General Goerge C.] Marshall issued an order making the entire series required viewing for every soldier. As the last film in the series, War Comes to America, states, 37 percent of American fighting men had less than a high school education. The average GI, Capra believed, was so ‘uninformed [that] this ‘free-world, slave-world’ [approach was] the only way you could reach that guy at that moment. You give him a lot of ‘but-on-the-other-hands’ and you confuse him completely.
McBride emphasizes this point again in the same chapter, citing directly from the Capra team’s first product.
‘This isn’t just a war,’ declares Prelude to War, the first Why We Fight film, on which [Eric] Knight collaborated with [Anthony] Veiller and Robert Heller. ‘This is a common man’s life-and-death struggle against those who would put him back into slavery. We lose it -- and we lose everything. Our homes, the jobs we want to go back to, the books we read, the very food we eat, the hopes we have for our kids, the kids themselves -- they won’t be ours anymore. That’s what’s at stake. It’s us or them. The chips are down.’
Boiling down the geopolitical, socioeconomic, and educational reasons for war to a few basic points may clarify the situation, but more importantly, Why We Fight reaches down to the primary reasons to be and fight for being an American. McBride summarizes Capra’s effect.
The ‘us or them’ dialectic gave the films the emotional power Capra sought, simplifying the enormously complex historical and political issues underlying the war into a single, quickly grasped black-and-white concept.
After the war, Capra returned to commercial filmmaking with It’s A Wonderful Life in 1946, re-teaming with old friend Jimmy Stewart. It was Stewart’s first film after World War II where he saw action as a bomber pilot.
One can analogize Jimmy Stewart’s character of George Bailey continuously struggling against the dictatorial Potter to America’s struggle against tyrannical rulers Hitler and Mussolini. In the film, Potter evokes Mussolini’s claim to make the trains run on time.
And the way of life of Bedford Falls had George never been born symbolizes what America might have become if the Allies had lost the war.
Where Capra’s Why We Fight series informed soldiers of the reasons for fighting in World War II, Hollwyood’s animation factories churned out propaganda on a regular basis with films known as ‘wartoons’ in some circles. Their primary purpose was to give the homefront audiences a comedic outlet.
In the 1995 documentary Cartoons Go To War, historians opine on the relevance of animation during the war. Animation historian Jerry Beck talks about the advantages that animation holds over other storytelling media, like live-action films.
Animation could do things that live-action films couldn’t. We could see fleets of ships that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to do in live-action were simple drawings and paintings in animation.
Disney blitzed the silver screen with wartoon after wartoon, inspiring the homefront. Film historian Patti Zimmermann talks about the founder of the House of Mouse and his source of success in Cartoons Go To War.
Walt Disney is the king of fantasy, but saw himself really as a popularizer of folk tales. But you can see that the popularization of folk tales, which are to mobilize children to good ends, would be a really compelling genre for the government who needs to mobilize Americans, who are somewhat figured as children, to good, good ends. The Disney studios did so much war work that historians like me can’t even see it all.
Surely, Disney allowed people to laugh through the exploits and adventures of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and the gang. A comical hit song featuring Donald Duck resulted from a Disney film -- Der Fuehrer’s Face. However, Disney showed the darker side of war. Education For Death is a rather chilling vision of Nazi Germany, one that ought not be lost in the shuffle amongst the more light-hearted cartoons.
Mike Glad, noted animation art collector, cites the film’s importance.
Clearly, the most poignant cartoon that may have been ever made, but certainly in the war effort, is Education For Death. The story is a story of the fact that the German people have to bring their youths and have them trained to be killed in the war and the use of the images. The last shot, the parting show is a graveyard with Nazi helmets on the crosses on the graves. And to think that the intensity that this is trying to elicit in terms of our understanding the brainwashing of the German people, and have it made as a theatrical release, is just incredible.
Warner Brothers, Disney’s cartoon competitor, also had a tremendous output during the war. Many Warner Brothers’ war time animated shorts are set against a combat backdrop.
In Super Rabbit (1943), Bugs Bunny takes on the persona of the title character, itself a parody of Superman. He battles the enemy on the European front.
Daffy Duck also saw action in outings, coming face to face with Hitler in Daffy the Commando (1943) and resisting a Nazi ‘seducktress’ (Hatta Mari) in Plane Daffy (1944) while on a secret mission.
The Weakly Reporter (1944) shows life on the homefront -- dealing with shortages, rations, and air raids. In their 1989 compendium Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Brothers Cartoons, Jerry Beck and Will Friedwald explain this animated short, a takeoff on a World War II newsreel.
The nation’s solidarity during wartime is shown with the Statue of Liberty wearing an air raid warden’s arm band, the heads on Mt. Rushmore in air raid warden helmets, and the state of Florida with a ‘We Love California’ sign stuck in it. There are numerous other homefront gags. After an auto accident, the ambulance picks up the rubber tires. A woman asks a butcher if he has porterhouse steak. She can afford only to smell it at a cost of $1.19. Hoarding is a thing of the past, but you can’t hoard too many War Bonds.
Warner Brothers also contributed Private Snafu to the war effort. The name is an acronym for a military term meaning Situation Normal All Fucked Up.
Snafu exemplifies the soldier not to be because he screws up by not paying attention to the big picture. Snafu films convey the import of missions to the soldiers, sort of a humorous corollary to Capra’s Why We Fight series. Messages include how not to spend your money foolishly on women and drinks in exotic, faraway places (Pay Day), how to keep your mission a secret (Spies), importance of doing research and reconnaissance (Snafuperman), and the danger of rumors (Rumors).
Theodore Geisel was a notable contributor to the Snafu films. We know him better by his pseudonym, Dr. Seuss. Other contributors include legendary Warner Brothers animation directors Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Bob Clampett. Steve Schneider notes Clampett’s fit with the World War II era in the 1988 book That’s All Folks! The Art of Warner Brothers Animation.
In many ways, Clampett was the right man for his time. His aggressiveness and lack of restraint fit the mood of the World War II years, when spirits were hight and the entire country was in gear to strike out at an oppressor.
Between 1941 and 1943, Max and Dave Fleischer released seventeen cartoon shorts featuring Superman through Paramount. World War II provided the theme for some stories starring the ultimate emblem of truth, justice, and the American way.
Japoteurs (1942) enjoys a title created by combining the words ‘Japanese’ and ‘saboteurs’ to reflect the protagonists. When the world’s largest bomber is ready for its test flight, nosy reporter Lois Lane cannot resist stowing away after a tour. ‘Japoteurs’ are also hiding aboard to steal the plane. Lane on the plane is the bane of Superman, but he predictably saves the day anyway.
Japanese enemy status recurs in Eleventh Hour (1942). The title refers to the 11:00 pm time of various sabotage acts committed by Superman in Yokohama, Japan.
In Jungle Drums, (1943), Superman fights the Nazis. He causes Hitler great frustration because of his success.
Superman reflects wartime in the publishing arena from which he originated. Look, a popular magazine of the day, called on Superman’s creators for a two-page 1943 comic book story, How Superman Would End the War. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster show Superman in combat, defeating the Nazi army. He captures Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, brings them to Geneva, Switzerland, and allows them to be judged for their war crimes.
In his 1995 book DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes, Les Daniels points out the significance of comic book characters during wartime in the chapter entitled Comic Books Go To War: Fighting the Good Fight.
Overall circulation tripled from 1940 to 1945; virtually every kid in America was a regular reader. Comics also had substantial circulation among servicemen, and civilian adults as well. The idea of the super hero, who gave up his ordinary life and put on a uniform to battle the bad guys, had special resonance during wartime; costumed characters became one of the emblems of the age. In a sense, they were America.
So-called mainstream films during the war also derived stories from World War II themes, for example, Mrs. Miniver and Casablanca. But war themes in Hollywood’s film product predated America’s official involvement begun with the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
The United States Senate called one of the Warner Brothers to testify on the studio’s involvement with propagandizing and alleged war-mongering. On September 25, 1941, Harry M. Warner, President of Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated, gave a prepared statement to the Hearing Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate Commerce, United States Senate, Regarding Moving Picture Propaganda.
Harry Warner’s edited statement appears in the 1985 book Inside Warner Brothers: 1935-1951, edited and annotated by Rudy Behlmer. Warner shows off his patriotism, quasi-defying the committee with his concluding statement.
In conclusion, I tell this committee honestly, I care nothing for any temporary advantage or profit that may be offered to me or my company. I will not censor the dramatization of the works of reputable and well informed writers to conceal from the American people what is happening in the world. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of enterprise cannot be bought at the price of other people’s rights. I believe the American people have a right to know the truth. You may correctly charge me with being anti-Nazi. But no one can charge me with being anti-American.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your courtesy in listenting to me.
Frank Sinatra made a short film way before he became Chairman of the Board, even before he became the darling of the bobbysoxer set. In the America’s Guest chapter of his 1998 book Rat Pack Confidential, Shawn Levy sets the tone for a 1941 film short that became de rigeur at school assemblies.
He also godfathered a curious little film project, The House I Live In, a ten-minute docudrama in which he preached a lesson in ethnic harmony to a mixed-race gang of street kids. ‘Look, fellas, religion makes no difference except to a Nazi or somebody as stupid, he explained. ‘My dad came from Italy, but I’m an American. Should I hate your father ‘cause he came from Ireland or France or Russia? Wouldn’t that make me a first-class fathead?’ Then he launched into the title song, a syrupy ode to American equality, and ended by admonishing his audience of converted Schweitzers, ‘Don’t let ‘em make suckers out of you.’ (The film won Special Academy Awards for its creators, including Sinatra, director Mervyn LeRoy, and screenwriter Albert Maltz, a future member of the famous Hollywood Ten group of blacklisted authors.
Hollywood’s not-so-silent World War II partner in production was the U.S. government. It actively participated in the entertainment production process through the Office of War Information and the various military departments. Representatives closely guarded the integrity of the charges under their aegis.
One tale recounted in Bob Thomas’ 1977 book Bud & Lou: The Abbott and Costello Story reflects the intensity and knee-jerk but sometimes necessary micromanagement of story and character details.
In the Navy (1942) was an early Abbott and Costello film. It forms one part of the team’s troika of military stories. The other two are Buck Privates (1941) and Keep ‘Em Flying (1942).
During the preparedness period of 1941, the armed services were eager for publicity, and [producer Alex] Gottlieb saved production money by acquiring permission to photograph navy ships and bases. The admirals were outraged when the final film was submitted for approval. The final sequence, filmed with miniatures at Salton Sea and real ships at Pearl Harbor, was a chase with Lou as a disguised admiral giving orders for hilarious maneuvers.
This didn’t go over too well with the Navy brass, according to Thomas.
‘An insult!’ cried the admirals, refusing to allow release of the film with the offending sequence. Universal executives were in a panic. The chase ran a reel in length and was the highlight of In the Navy. Gottlieb asked permission for a morning’s retakes. He filmed a scene in which Bud struck Lou on the head with a frying pan during an argument. Unconscious, Lou dreamed the entire chase. On that basis, the Navy Department gave its approval of the movie.